“If you hadn’t worked for Langley before, it would have been much harder.”
“Yeah.” Will recognized that there was some benefit from having a history.
“I don’t want to know anything else. Officially, I’ll be forgetting all of this once you step on that airplane.”
Col. Ritchie was saying this was a one-way street. He nodded his understanding.
“Still up on your Russian?”
“Yeah. I guess we’ll see.”
She nodded. “Good hunting.”
It was better than saying good luck.
* * * *
The crew car was parked back in the same spot near the FBO. He left the key under the floor mat. It was a middle of the weekday, which was perfect for the little airport. Much of its business was from the Cessna 172 single-engine pilot who was working on his hours to get his instrument rating. Some of the younger ones were working toward the dream of flying for one of the airlines. Most of the pilots using Potomac Airfield were still at their day jobs at this hour, so when the HondaJet taxied out later, the field should still be vacant.
A taxi was waiting for him at a nearby gas station. Will hiked the mile to the station to gain more separation from any would-be trackers. He climbed in and gave the driver his instructions.
“Run me up to Reagan.” From Reagan, he would take the subway to Union Station. If anyone were on his trail, he would at least make it more difficult. He handed the man a hundred-dollar bill, which would more than cover the fare.
“Yes, sir.”
When he got to Union Station, he stopped and used one of his burner phones to call back to the small airfield. He had a request to the chief flight instructor, whom he had known for years.
“Take the HondaJet for a trip.” Will knew more about the flight instructor when he made the offer than many of his student pilots. The man’s logbook went easily over 10,000 hours, much of which included several tours in the Gulf flying the F-15E Strike Eagle. Will wasn’t entrusting his bird with a pilot who didn’t know how to handle a twin-engine jet aircraft.
The instructor’s eagerness to fly the hot rod came through in his single-word response: “Okay?”
“Don’t do any Panther tricks.” Will was referencing the name of the man’s squadron. The 494th, or Panthers, were known for coming in low and fast.
“I got it.”
“I need you to fly VFR to Atlantic City and refuel. From there, file IFR in the air to JFK. The FBO has instructions about the aircraft. Under the pilot’s seat is an envelope that should cover everything.”
No one would notice the slight change made to the aircraft. Its tail number had been slightly modified so tracking it would be impossible.
“And one other thing.”
“You got it.”
“In the envelope are instructions about buying a ticket. Details on a passport and a credit card under that name should work. You can do it all by phone from the New York FBO.”
The pilot would call Air France once he landed and place the order for a round-trip ticket on Flight 007 connecting in Paris to 1044 into Sheremetyevo under the name that matched the passport. The same credit card also cleared the express Russian entry visa, but under the name of Will Parker’s passport—a different name than Will Parker. His placing the order from New York gave Will some further cover should anyone be on his trail.
When Will offered the man cash, he refused. “Hell, just for the chance to fly a HondaJet,” said the instructor, “I’d do it for free.” Every pilot liked to expand his repertoire of airplanes he has flown.
Will insisted on at least paying for the man’s shuttle flight home. He was glad the instructor would enjoy himself along the way.
* * * *
The next morning the jet taxied to the very end of the runway and set up for a short-field takeoff. It required the pilot’s holding the brake pedals on until the very last second while the two jet engines spun up to maximum power. The aircraft rocked as the energy surged through it. When he released the brakes, the airplane’s roll pushed him back into his seat. In a few yards, he pulled up on the yoke to lighten the weight on the nose. Slightly beyond the halfway point, he felt the aircraft free contact with the ground. The HondaJet stayed at a low profile to build up speed after it broke from the friction of the tires on the asphalt and then, just before the pine trees at the end of the runway started to fill up his view in the window, the pilot pulled back on the yoke, and the jet took off like the race car it was meant to be. He banked left, away from Washington, headed to the New Jersey coastline below 18,000 feet, on a visual flight rule journey that kept it off of the records, and was soon down on the runway in Atlantic City. Touching down, he took on fuel, took off again, opened an instrument flight plan, and made his way to JFK.
The HondaJet made good time into JFK. There, the pilot taxied the small plane to the general aviation terminal where Sheltair JFK was waiting.
“You should have a hangar reservation for it,” the pilot said.
“Yes, sir. November-eight-eight-three-Charlie Sierra will be in hangar six.” The man with the tow truck pulled the aircraft away from the FBO.
“Shouldn’t need much, but top off the tanks.” He gave the man the credit card information.
The flight instructor made the call from the pilot’s lounge to Air France, locked down the ticket and visa, left the FBO, took a cab to LaGuardia, and was on the Delta shuttle within an hour.
The only problem was that the aircraft was not N883CS.
* * * *
Will looked at his cell phone for the time. The Amtrak Acela Express from Washington’s Union Station was early. It had taken less than three hours to make the journey to Penn Station. He took the subway to the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. The woman at the desk had a package waiting for the freelance reporter working on a follow-up story about the famous hacker who had sought sanctuary in Russia. Under the new administration, CNN had assigned more reporters to the Russian beat. Consequently, his going to Moscow didn’t raise any eyebrows in New York.
The ticket on the Air France flight was in business class. Will had suspected that it would attract less attention if he were simply another businessman flying to Moscow. And it gave him the chance to eat and catch up on his sleep for the first time since returning from Snag.
The Airbus A380 flew through the night, landing in Paris at just after dawn. Will made his way to the Air France lounge, where he used a computer to log into an email-provider website that resided on the deep web. This way, he could communicate with the gunny in secret. He had a Mac with him, but it was intended both to fit his cover and contain fabricated articles that supported his journalistic credentials. The computers here could be trusted; in Moscow, the FSB had eyes on everything and everyone. If he failed to remember that, it would end badly.
“You have a bride waiting for you. Alina.” Moncrief’s email seemed comical, but was far from it. He sent her name, her photo, and the other details. She was the contact who would supply what was needed on the other end. “You have four nights reserved at the Arbat Six near Arbatskiy Pereulok.”
Will knew the area on the west side of the center of Moscow. He exchanged several thousand dollars into rubles. Using local currency would help him fade into the background. He looked through the shop at de Gaulle, trying to find the most nondescript clothing available, pulling a plain gray sweatshirt from a rack, along with prefaded blue jeans. He also bought a pair of black sneakers that had labels not recognizable as American. Muscovites thought of themselves as being stylish and liked Western fashions, but they rarely wore clothes with recognizable Western logos. Nike sightings were rare in the city of twelve and a half million people. A black Lomaiyi parka finished the outfit.
The short layover allowed him to buy two burner phones equipped with Russian SIM cards. The flight arrived in Moscow late in the afternoon
. In customs, officials studied his two phones for a while.
“One for family and one for business,” he said, as if it mattered. The phones were both registered with the SORM eavesdropping system that the FSB used, a semantic archive that followed every electronic device entering Russia. He had planned on it.
And not only electronics surveillance. Will was followed as soon as he waved a taxi down at the airport entrance.
“CNN bureau 7/4 kopnyc 1in Kutuzovsky.” He thought it best to check in with the CNN bureau as soon as he arrived.
“Yes.” The taxi driver was probably an FSB agent; at the very least, all conversations in the car would be overheard and taped. Reporters always drew some level of attention when they entered Russia.
Will reported to the bureau, arriving just before they closed the door.
“Not aware of you much.” The clerk was American and, after years of being in Russia, had clearly become wary of those she didn’t recognize.
He noticed that she was wearing a puffy down vest over a thick sweater.
“Don’t they pay the heat bill?”
“Of course they don’t.” She smiled. “What work have you done?”
“Mostly freelance.”
“You got some time with Ridges?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you pull that off?”
“Just hit it at the right time,” he deflected. She wouldn’t have believed him if he told her it came courtesy of Col. Gail Ritchie’s extensive contacts.
“Okay. Do you need lodging?”
“No. Doing a quick human-interest story, then I’m out of here. My Air France leaves at three ten on Saturday.” He needed to plant the idea in her mind should any inquiry be made.
* * * *
Will checked into a hotel on the west side of Moscow. He put both phones down in the room, as well as the used PowerBook with the dummy stories he’d pounded out during the flight over. Most were human interest stories about the bright computer technician from Nowhere, Ohio, who’d brought down the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He thought it was the right hook for the FSB to believe. It imparted the proper tone—namely, that his upcoming article would only serve to embarrass both the DIA director and the US president.
Odds were that the FSB agents would let Ridges take a look at his stories. Will was guessing that Michael Ridges might like the story as well. A small-town, but brilliant, computer geek takes down a key member of the new cabinet. It seemed clear that he wanted to embarrass Alexander Paul, though it was still very unclear as to why. Will mumbled aloud to himself for the benefit of any hidden microphones as he left the PowerBook open and on the table. It was probably a little too apparent that he was making it accessible; still, it was vital that he appear to be an open book to the Russians, thus providing them with no reason to delay the visit with Ridges.
He found a small café near the hotel, drank some shots of vodka, ate a supper of beef stroganoff and boiled potatoes, and went back to his hotel and bed. As he walked back into the hotel, it was snowing and dark. He glanced in the reflection of the glass at the two men in the car across the street.
Poor guys, trailing a boring American while freezing in a Lada. He wanted to knock on their window and invite them in for some vodka, but he imagined that the car was probably already well-stocked.
Sorry, boys. It’s gonna be a cold one. His mercy stopped short. He knew if they had any inkling as to who he really was, the blows would be brutal.
Will took in the dark, frigid winter night in Moscow as he walked the final block to his hotel. The snow had stopped for a short time, but the cold air hung close to the ground. The streetlights let out a glow that reflected off of the new snow’s surface.
“Goddamn freezing,” he mumbled to himself as he stopped at the front desk. The clerk was a middle-aged man, with large, yellow, crooked teeth, a balding pate, and a pleasant smile.
“What’s the weather going to do?” He said it in slow, all-too-clear English, as if he was someone who wouldn’t even try to learn the local language.
“A bad storm is coming.”
“Where can I buy some gloves?”
All his life, Will had possessed a talent that followed him through his military career. He was a perfect linguist, able to speak languages from six continents, and he could speak Russian with a few different local accents, when required. Here, he didn’t even try his Russian.
The phone rang while he was standing there. The clerk answered the call and spoke with an FSB agent asking about the status of the new guest. The clerk, thinking the American had no idea, gave the agent a clear description of the man standing in front of him. He finally hung up the phone.
“Busy night?” Will asked.
The clerk didn’t answer that question.
“Bershka…but it’s a long way.” The man seemed to ponder the right store for the American, as if to judge the size of his pocketbook. Almost certainly, he already had been briefed by the FSB as to why the guest was there. Another American here to make Russia look bad.
Will thanked the man.
He stopped as he turned away and then turned around.
“I am expecting a visitor in the morning.”
The clerk put on his reading glasses to look at the piece of paper that Will handed him from his pocket. It had the name of a woman.
“Mmm. Is she coming here?”
“I believe so.” It was the name of the Russian bride that Moncrief had given him. She was more than a Russian bride. And her help was vital.
Chapter 29
Paul’s Headquarters Near Dulles, Virginia
“He’s disappeared,” Caldwell told his boss.
Retired Marine and self-appointed investigator William Parker was nowhere to be found.
“I’ve checked with several sources. He was seen in Memphis. We know his airplane went from there to his farm in Georgia and then landed at a small airfield in Maryland.”
“What airfield?” Alexander Paul snapped. His usual air of calm seemed to be evaporating.
“Potomac Airfield.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s about ten miles from here.”
Paul gave him the look that usually was followed with a flood of cusswords. “Planes don’t disappear. Check it out.” He clearly didn’t like the idea that Parker was somewhere in the area of the capital and no one had any idea as to why.
“Yes, sir.”
“What about Stewart?” He knew that the doctor was somewhere in Alaska.
“I’ll get on it.”
“Any number for him?”
Caldwell shook his head.
“There’s got to be another way to get in touch with him.”
“I may have an idea.” Caldwell gave Paul a curt nod and turned for the door. “I’ll report back as soon as I have something.”
* * * *
Caldwell drove the thirty miles to Potomac Airfield. Traffic slowed him down as it was near the end of the day. The airstrip had a line of small, single-engine airplanes, a hangar that looked like a tin building from the forties, and what looked like a small office near the hangar.
“Hello.” Caldwell walked through the door to see a man in his mid-thirties sitting behind a desk covered with paper, and several shelves behind the man with models of a variety of small and large aircraft. It was immediately apparent to Caldwell that this airport was a work of passion for flying, as compared to a business looking for substantial profits.
“Can I help you?” The man at the desk didn’t get up. In the background, the radio chirped with calls from pilots flying in the area. The sound of aircraft engines spinning up for takeoff filled the room with noise.
“A friend of mine came through here yesterday. A Mr. Parker. The record showed his aircraft landed here.”
“Oh, the
little jet?”
“I think so.”
“Our airfield was too short for him. He had to divert at the last minute.”
Caldwell blinked, waited a beat. “Well, I can’t find a record of him landing anywhere.”
“Who knows? You might want to try Ocean City. I think he diverted to there.”
Caldwell nodded. Visual-flight-rule landings required no record. Jets rarely did VFR flights, which were at low altitudes. It was a line, but Caldwell knew that there would be no help here. “Thanks and sorry to bother you.”
Well-played, he thought.
Will Parker had friends and he was clearly up to something. To have any chance of finding out what, Caldwell knew he’d need to speak to Kevin Moncrief or find Dr. Stewart.
Chapter 30
Whitehorse, Yukon
The four-wheel-drive pickup truck that Kevin Moncrief rented from K&K was ready for the hardship of a Yukon winter. The tires were well knobbed and the radiator had a heating plug-in for severe drops in temperature. Moncrief pulled out of the airport at Whitehorse and went half a mile to Hougen’s Sports Lodge, one of the largest hunting-supply stores in the western Yukon.
“Hello.” Moncrief was a descendant of the Apache tribe, so folks in the Yukon might easily have thought he came from one of the local indigenous communities.
“Yes, sir.” The clerk didn’t know that the perfect customer had just come through the door.
“I’m heading out into the wilderness and need to get some supplies.” Moncrief looked around the space. “Nice moose,” he said, nodding at the large mount that looked over the store.
“What type of supplies are you talking about?”
“I’m backpacking into a remote location.”
“This time of year?”
“Yeah.” He looked at the guns that lined the wall. “Let’s start with a rifle.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“How about the Marlin?”
“Okay.” The clerk’s interest grew visibly as he realized he had a guy who knew his weapons. “You planning on stopping a bear?”
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